The Weekend Week’s End Wrap Up in pop culture drama-rama for November 15-21 is brought to you by Michael Jackson’s sparkly spangly glove which sold for more money that you’ve ever heard of.

Sunday: This didn’t happen until the 21st, but it’s my favorite story of the week and also Sunday is God’s day (That’s the Jesus-God, not the other ones). Pope “The Pope” Benedict XVI invited hundreds of artists, masters and craftsmen of all media except photography, pottery, screen printing, animation, 3D and digital design, fiber arts, sequential art and illustration, fashion design, metal and jewelry design, and graphic design, to attend a speech at the Sistine Chapel. The Pope said he would like to “renew the Church’s friendship with the world of art,” and urged all artists* to put a sense of spirituality in to their work, citing contemporary aesthetics as “illusory and deceitful.” To hold this meeting under the machismo that is Michelangelo’s ceiling fresco** is a total tease to the art world. Hey, Holy See, none of us are working. You have all the money. Start building some chapels. Don’t the cardinals need some new basilicas? You got any bell towers in the works that could use some statuary? Does that ceiling need touched up at all? It can be just like the old days. Like, the really, really old days. We’ll rediscover perspective if you want! Give us some jobs!***

Monday: Hey, did I tell you guys I got swine flu? Well, I did, and it was terrible. For two days. Here’s how swine flu works. First you have the worst headache you’ve ever had in your life. Then you feel better. Then you wake up and your lungs feel like they are filled with fiberglass. And you can’t breathe because your head is filled with angry bees and they are stinging your eyeballs and ear drums. And then you get a fever and feel like you are going to absolutely die because there is no possible way a human can deal with this. Then the fever breaks and everything is fine and you have a really bad cough for like a week. So that was cool.

Tuesday: Adam Lambert, the runner up on last season’s American Idol, and my personal new celebrity boifriend, is finally featured on the cover of Out magazine. It’s a gay magazine, in case that wasn’t incredibly obvious. Oh, and Adam Lambert is also gay. That was already obvious. I say “finally,” because Lambert’s label would not allow him to be featured previously on the cover of the mag. According to the Editor-in-Chief Aaron Hicklin, “it’s only because this cover is a group shot that includes a straight woman that your(Adam’s) team would allow you to be photographed at all — albeit with the caveat that we must avoid making you look ‘too gay.’ ” Following the advice of upstanding citizen and master of good judgment Gene Simmons, no one thinks an openly fabulishious performer will sell records. Adam, baby, put on an extra coat of eye liner, unbutton your shirt a little more, kiss that drag queen a few more times, and pose your little heart out. You’re here, you’re really queer, and they need to get used to it.

Wednesday: Evangelical Christians from the Living Waters Church (Publications? LLC? Couldn’t really figure it out. Also, I’m pretty sure “living water” is a term homeopaths use to describe drinking urine. Not that I’m poisoning the well here…) decided to… protest.. Charles Darwin, somehow, by handing out copies of “On the Origin of Species.” Except for the 50-page forward written by Ray Comfort (yes, really), founder of Living Waters, nothing in the book has been changed. Darwin’s work has not been commented on or modified in any way. 2009 has marked the celebration of Darwin’s 200th birthday, and next week will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first publication of “On the Origin of Species.” I’m not exactly sure how this is supposed to encourage people to disprove evolution, but I would sure like a nice free copy of this book.****

Thursday: Nobel Peace Prize winner Mr. Al Gore, Former Vice President of the United States, appeared on the hit NBC show 30 Rock. The Academy award winning director and author played himself in a hilarious self-mocking bit in which he discusses “going green” with TGS assistant Kenneth. Go watch it.

Friday: “On Friday, ‘New Moon’ set an all-time domestic high for opening day with $72.7 million, topping the previous record of $67.2 million by last year’s ‘The Dark Knight.’” REALLY? Who are these people that like non-violent, non-scary, non-bloody vampires? WHO? That’s all vampires are for! They are dead and gory and scary and stalk you in the night and kill you or turn you in to an undead monster-creep and then people try to pelt you with Communion wafers or rip out your organs and cut off your head. Oh, and going outside in daylight makes vampires burn to death. Not sparkle. VAMPIRES DON’T SPARKLE. Don’t even get me started on the hell-beasts that werewolves are supposed to be.

Saturday: MJ’s ridiculous (come on, we can say that now, right? It was dumb. It was garish, it was crazy gay, except not in a fabulous way, but in a way-too-many-rhinestones-for-human-eyes way) glove, that he wore at the debut of his moonwalk in ‘83, sold for… hold on a second here… oh, right, “for $350,000 — plus tax — on Saturday. Winning bidder Hoffman Ma of Hong Kong will pay $420,000, including taxes and fees, for the rhinestone-studded, modified golf glove Jackson wore on his left hand for his moonwalk on Motown’s 25th anniversary TV special.” (AP). See all that detail there for no reason? That’s the joke.

*Painters and sculptors. Because that’s all the art that the Church ever needed. Way to step all the way in to the late 18th century there, Vatican.

**For real, that dude could not paint women. Check out some of those Sibyls. They’re like Roman soldiers with grapefruits stuffed in their shirts.

*** My fellow art grad Ned: “The Catholic Church funding art again is going to be like when I was a kid and went to Hershey Park’s Christmas thing, and then years later I wondered why I hadn’t done it in a while and went back and it wasn’t so great.”

****NOTE: Much of Darwin’s findings from 1859 have been modified, discarded, expanded upon, or otherwise changed in the intervening century and a half. Creationists like to say that this PROVES Darwin was “wrong.” Just like how Mendeleev was wrong because he hadn’t discovered all of the elements before he published his Periodic Table. Just like Babbage’s difference engine was useless because it didn’t pick up Wi-Fi.

Tags: adam lambert, charles darwin, new moon, swine flu, the glove, the pope
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